monthly cheque payment installments up to several months in advance allowing their customers to pay for expensive goods as a sort of a line of no interest credit. UK In the UK the legislation is clear; 'A cheque is a bill of exchange drawn on a banker payable on demand'. Under the Bills of Exchange and Banking Act 1882, part 10, bills of exchange are payable on demand and in part 13, 'A bill is not invalid by reason only that it is ante-dated or post-dated.' In the United Kingdom, post-dating a cheque carries no legal weight and so such a cheque can be cashed before the due date. However, a bank may refuse to honour a cheque if the post-date is noticed; otherwise, the payer has no right to take any form of legal action against the bank for letting the cheque be processed. It is common for the terms and conditions of current accounts to state that post-dated cheques should not be written and will be dishonoured if detected. In some instances a post-dated cheque may be retained by the bank and paid on the due date if that date is only a few days away. Some UK organisations do not accept post-dated cheques as well as some Government Departments, while paying income tax or voluntary National Insurance may only be done with post-dated cheques with permission from HM Revenue and Customs. United States In the United States, national banks are permitted to pay checks even though payment occurs prior to the date of the check. According to the Comptroller of the Currency: "A check is a negotiable instrument—the payee, the person to whom the check is written, may negotiate it through the banking system at any time" and check writers seeking redress must restrict themselves to pursuing the payee. Nonetheless, if "the customer has given notice to the bank of the postdating describing the check with reasonable certainty" the Uniform Commercial Code requires that the notice to be honored. In practice, whether the check writer has any redress against the financial institution where the payee deposited the check may depend on whether it can be shown that the check was accepted over the counter without examination. See also Antedated check Stale-dated check References Cheques Banking terms